Chain Letter to a Guy
by Dogsthorne
Summary: Months too late, Evey comes to terms with the chasm between her and a certain Guy, and the complexity of feelings caught between. Movie-verse


An old piece I keep bumping into and continuing on a improbably long on-and-off basis. Found it again tonight and finally finished it. Enjoy!

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_J.M. Barrie – _God gave us memories so we may have roses in December.

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**5th November**

_one day  
i shall come home  
far beyond the wave  
where we shall no longer roam_

(remember, remember)

**5th December**

There is one word in the street  
Your name like punctuation; drunks gurgling in tongues:  
London is your congregation, I your unwilling prophet  
Our awe seethes. You are lucky to be dead.

There was Adam  
And now there is Eve—  
He preached God's glory and dealt judgment  
I quote a murderer and  
promise choice

-- a lie.

You are creator and casualty of it, after all.

**5th January**

Jennings, McGrath, Dumas, Clearwater—  
the one and twenty names I forge,  
all neatly printed at the end of each ultimatum, each cajole,  
each hallowed blasphemy.

Clearwater against De Gras's;  
Pope's logic a frost on Blackstone's quicksilver  
-- I have a fondness for Dumas and his quotes  
and so rarely let him out.

It is true, what Gordon said:  
The mask, the forgetting.  
And here I thought I was supposed to find myself, hah—

A joke.

**5th February**

I dreamt last night, of you—  
Incandescent, living night  
Dressed up in false memory and  
grave silence; god, your eyes  
Blank as hate, as love, as  
nothing.

I told you to get lost, never come back,  
I told you to sit, tea and biscuits,  
I told you the tv's spoilt again, and take your mask off.

Stop hunting me. I can't sleep.

**5th March**

I write…

in your room between your  
sheets the cell my cell toast  
and burn the  
egg white wipe why listen  
music cries from  
jukebox evey will you  
dance with me I feel  
dirty

I write…

As Clearwater – so hopeful;  
As McGrath – ever weary;  
As Pope – spit-bitter;  
As Jennings – too young

I write…

Listen, V, listen:

I write.

**5th April**

The months are long  
but time is short. There is so much to do  
and all I have is this free time.

This expanse of– do you _understand_?  
This _expense._ This free time, never mine:  
ours. And soon, one day, I know  
it will be my turn  
to burn, blaze, fire from my tongue  
ashes in my mouth,  
streaming incandescence  
rising up, remorseless; like  
the way I always saw you; like  
the way you thought I could be.

Oh V, V – was I ever ready for  
the truth behind the mask?

Will they ever be?

**5th May**

You have trapped me in this:  
I see this clearly now.

You let me go  
to capture me;  
You set me free  
and ask me to come back.

Of your free will, you smile.  
Of your own choice, you –  
_Liar_! We both know:  
the devil quotes scripture for his own purpose.

And now, you say: go live your life  
as you wish  
as you will  
and I ask nothing of you  
leave nothing for you – except  
of course,  
this bleeding heart of mine  
in your small hands  
cut open, beating, beating –  
dying;  
and my soul,  
which is England.  
And I ask nothing of you  
because you belong to no one,  
not even I who only  
made you.

And six words, because  
three is not enough –  
Are you ready? I fell in love with you.  
My Evey.  
I fell in love with you.

Oh the watershed tortures are nothing, V;  
Of all things, I will never forget –  
Of all words, these six I will never forgive.

**5th June **

I tried to stop today –  
out of spite, I admit;  
but the words clamoured in my head –  
such a ruckus; I had to write after all  
if only to get some peace.

I am apathetic; I am obsessed;  
you have cornered me; I am  
driven. I have discovered grief  
as only a bodily function: natural and  
meaningless – _do you hear me?_  
I eat, I sneeze, I grieve, and of course  
of course  
the mind stays clear of bodily excretions  
which means  
which must mean:  
I write because I want to.  
_I want to._

(this has_ nothing_ to do with you;  
i am leaving _you, _V, listen  
_listen!_  
Like before, _I _am leaving _you._)  
**  
5th July **

Someone once told me _you wear a mask so long you forget  
who you are_ – Ah _and thus I clothe my naked villainy_  
_With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ_ – yes but _in the end  
you must give the devil your due_ – yet _I must be cruel to be kind,  
Thus the bad begins and leaves the worse behind _– but I would say  
_nothing emboldens sin as much as mercy_ – oh _some rise by sin,  
others by virtue fall_ but Evey:  
I _shalt be both the plaintiff and judge of mine own cause.  
_  
And you would finish –_  
No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself_  
And I would reply –_  
And seem the saint, when most you play the devil._

And then, in the silence of my imagination,  
perhaps you will say, so quietly,_  
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil._

And how unfair it is that you can always win;  
how unfair that you would _dare_ to bring that word up  
when it is too late, too bloody_ late_; when  
I could always say – when what I have always wanted to say is:

_In a room full of victims, murderers are gods_.

**5th August**

It is nearly done  
Your work, your life, your soul.

They hold the elections tomorrow –  
I would prefer your anniversary,  
but there is little sentimentality in our  
brave new world.

My new role fits me easily:  
sociopath, clean and quick.  
Already I have killed fourteen writers,  
and am planning more:  
Few miss the deceased.

What shall I do, when I have killed my last self?  
Shall I start on the front-row audience, reveal the truth  
behind my letters;  
Shall I show them that New New England was shaped not  
by the teeming voices of the multitude, but nothing  
nothing but one woman,  
one Eve;  
shall I do to them what you did to me?

No. I would know:  
it takes nine months to give birth to gratitude, to sight anew,  
to forgiveness  
and we do not have such time.

– Or perhaps it is all  
hypocrisy: I just don't want to deal with the aftermath  
like you did  
like you barely could.

**5th September**

It is over.

It is finally over – and I do not blaze.  
It is finally over – and I do not stream incandescence,  
nor rise remorseless, or otherwise.  
All my masks are dead, and  
there are ashes in my mouth.  
And I feel – _I feel –_

My massacre is finished; I lay my pens down.

I would return to the scene of our crime,  
but you did not ask me to.  
I would come back, but you did not ask me  
and you are not here to ask  
my hand in a dance  
or otherwise.

There is no train for me.

Perhaps you are somewhere else, waiting;  
the way I have been waiting for you  
heartsick and angry; perhaps  
you are waiting still.

But there is no train for me, and we both know:  
that is what really matters.

And I feel – _I feel – _

(there are roses in December  
and they are too much,  
too much  
_too much_  
and yet,  
not enough)

**5th October**

The day after your death  
I found a promise – a poem –  
written at the corner of an abandoned book  
left open-faced in the Gallery.  
The smudged ink of such a simple line  
written by your unsteady hand -  
more intimate than a gloveless touch, somehow:  
I wish I had not burned that book.

Now there is no reason  
for such petty revenge:  
I suppose there never has been. There is no reason  
for anything much anymore – except  
of course,  
this young heart of mine  
in my own hands,  
cut open, beating, beating,  
living;  
and my soul,  
which is mine  
as it always has been  
as I finally understand now.

And sixteen words  
because six is not enough –  
are you ready?

-- Of course you are. You already know.  
I could accuse you of  
false choice, false will but  
you never did know if I was coming back, did you?

One day  
I too  
may come home.

But not yet.

**5th November**

(remember, remember)

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_

* * *

Shakespeare:_

And thus I clothe my naked villainy/ With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ / And seem the saint, when most I play the devil  
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.  
I must be cruel only to be kind;/ Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.  
Some rise by sin, others by virtue fall  
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.

_Nietzsche:_

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.  
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

_Gordon Deitrich _– You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.

"Our island home / is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam" - Alfred Tennyson

In a room full of victims, murderers are gods – forgot the author; will welcome a memory-refresher :)

Thanks for your feedback! :)


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